Daughter says OK, Bornemiss takes job

John Vargo

Sports Reporter

jvargo@tribtoday.com

Joe Bornemiss was in a quandary, unsure of how to approach the situation. He consulted his daughter, Cara, who will be a senior at Mathews High School.

Joe has coached his daughter in girls basketball, but that all changed June 5 as the Maplewood Board of Education hired him as boys basketball varsity coach.

Bornemiss replaces Nathan Kish, who returned to his alma mater to coach at Champion High School.

He started coaching the Mustangs in the 2013-14 season and had 17 wins this past season — including a Northeastern Athletic Conference title. However, his previous experience had been coaching boys basketball. The Mathews job was his first coaching job on the girls side.

Even though Cara is playing at Mathews next season, Joe knows he has his daughter’s support for this move.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be a good thing or bad thing for her,” Joe said. “She’s such a smart kid. She’s got so much going on for herself.

“She said, ‘Hey dad, I know this is what you want to do.’ “

Bornemiss coached at Jackson-Milton from 2009-11 before his job was transferred to Dayton prior to the fall of the 2011-12 season.

He learned things from those two years at Jackson-Milton, which will serve him well at Maplewood.

Bornemiss said you can’t go in with the attitude to score a lot of points. Going back to the lessons he learned with former Girard coach Bob Krizancic (current Mentor coach) where his teams played physical, tough and for four quarters — baseline to baseline.

Bornemiss, a 1983 Girard High graduate, wants the Rockets to take on that aggressive attitude.

“We’re going to play physical and get after the 50/50 balls,” he said. “We’re going to play on both ends of the court, whether it’s offense or defense.

“If you get those things put in place in your system, I think you get good results.”

Results are so far, so good for Bornemiss, who had 30-plus boys show up for his first open gym in Mecca.

With this new style, he wants to be competitive with rival Bristol, which has been the dominant team in the Northeastern Athletic Conference the past couple of seasons.

“How powerful Bristol is right now, you’ve got to step on the floor with teams like that and want to win,” Bornemiss said. “You can’t be on the reverse end and play the game. You know how powerful they are. That’s what I need to bring to this system.

“You can play that way and be competitive. That’s where we need to be.”